Plans by housebuilder Taylor Wimpey to build an additional 58 homes at its Broad Lane development near Kingsway Business Park will be discussed by Rochdale Council’s planning committee next week, with a recommendation to approve.

Taylor Wimpey is currently building 110 three and four-bed homes at an adjacent site as part of its Pennine Gate development, and submitted a full planning application to build 58 additional houses in June this year.

The 5.2-acre site just off Broad Lane by the M62 also borders a development by Wainhomes, which is building 60 homes.

The land is listed as protected open land under Rochdale’s local plan, but planning officers said Taylor Wimpey’s plans represented “a sustainable form of development” and recommended the scheme for approval, subject to a section 106 agreement.

This agreement includes a £179,000 contribution towards primary school places and £171,000 towards recreational space at Balderstone Park.

Turley acted as planner for the project, with Urban Green as ecology consultant, and Astle Planning & Design as architect.

Whilst I don’t represent every housebuilder, the customer is quite literally at the heart of everything we do, and if we did provide poor quality and value we wouldn’t have their service for long. We’ve been established 60+ years now.

I appreciate the view that ‘quality’ isn’t as good at traditional build, but in my opinion that’s a view based simply on ‘thick walled’ period housing vs. newbuild housing which is far more energy efficient etc. and has to abide by much more stringent modern standards. Are the walls thinner, well yes they are, but that doesn’t signify a lack of quality.

I admit there is, unfortunately, a broad spectrum of ‘quality’ on show when comparing developers, but it is quite trying to be constantly marred by the universal ‘new build housing is crap’ mantra.

Well maybe you could reveal what % of the cost of a new house is spent on construction compared to land, infrastructure, fees and profit? How does the square footage compare to similar homes in similarly developed countries across Europe or the selling price per square foot? What is the impact of Help to Buy on profitability? How many defects are left to be resolved on completion? How does the design energy efficiency compare to as-built performance? How bespoke are the house types to the local area? How many times have you used an expensive consultant to wriggle out of planning obligations? How sensitive is your output is to price fluctuations? Do you employ a clerk of works? How receptive your firm is to innovation? How much of your site-based workforce is directly employed?

Most people, rightly, understand that the term “housebuilder” is a misnomer for most firms in the UK. They’re primarily land developers and speculators.

There are general “rule of thumb” answers to that question although its changing a lot now.

They used to say about 20-30% of your costs would be land but thats constantly increasing due to S106 and CIL.

Many developers work on a profit on cost of 20% across the industry, although its a bit of a neophytes approach to assume this as its a number typically touted about at university to give students something to work off while training.

The difficulty is build costs are not always comparable to land costs, building in an exclusive part of Cheshire, while your build costs will go up to reflect improved build quality/standard/design etc your land costs will increase astronomically in proportion. Which is why in lower priced areas, while the land value may be relatively low £100-200k an acre, your build costs are still quite high making the site less attractive or possibly not even viable once you throw in 106/CIL.

I dont place blame on housebuilders, I place blame on the over convoluted planning system mired in red tape and the “sacred” greenbelt. This creates a situation where smaller/new firms struggle to get started, Joe blogs cant build his own family home due to the red rape/bs and cost of sites “with planning” and the only people getting things are established firms, giving them the monopoly.